Classic Poem

What is this silence when I meet thee, Dear,
And after such delay?
Is soul to soul for words too nearly near;
Or are we still apart;
Cleora, say?

The tender hand my boyhood press'd I take,
That thro' some fifteen years
Its young proportion keeps: I cannot speak:
But gaze on that dear pledge
Time more endears.

Ah Love — And has love grown with growing years?
In that dumb moment's show
The question of a life with many fears
Perusing glances ask:
And better so.

There are no mortal words for such request:
Nor could I, Darling, more
Than by the voiceless pleading of the breast,
By the heart's crimson tears,
Thy pity implore:

By all that changeless love to promise thee
For more than life may dare:
By all the burden thou hast laid on me,
Having no other hope
But this despair:-

Not so , the scornful world and custom say:
Submit: be blithe as we.
I take the tenour of the common day:
To common themes the tongue
Again is free.

But ever and anon some transient tone,
Some glance at where thou art —
And mid the jocund throng I stand alone,
And in my all the world
May claim no part.

How will it be, I ask'd me as I came,
With her I left so fair?
— The music of thy beauty is the same;
'Tis the bright voice of yore
Heard on the stair.

Dearest: And hast no little word for ease:
No hint of kindlier strain?
And owns the tender heart no tenderness:
Canst thus endure to give
Painless, such pain?

Ah Child — , ah dearer than aught else on earth,
So far off and so near:-
Spare him a little who so knows thy worth,
But finds no words to say
How thou art dear.